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I’ll tell you, Nine chances out of ten, bio section will classify us as a possible enemy weapon. That means, first of all, that we’ll go through a full-dress interrogation—and I don’t have to tell you what that can be like.”
    “Major Gumbs,” said McCarty stridently, “Meister will be executed for disloyalty at the first opportunity. You are forbidden to talk to him, under the same penalty.”
    “But she can’t stop you from listening to me,” George said ( tensely. “In the second place, Gumbs, they’ll take samples. Without anaesthesia. And finally, they’ll either destroy us just the same, or they’ll send us back to the nearest strong point for more study. We will then be Federation property, Gumbs, in a top-secret category, and since nobody in Intelligence will ever dare to take the responsibility of clearing us, we’ll stay there.
    “Gumbs, this is a valuable specimen, but it will never do anybody any good if we go back to camp. Whatever we discover about it, even if it’s knowledge that could save billions of lives, that will be top-secret too, and it’ll never get past the walls of Intelligence… If you’re still hoping that they can get you out of this, you’re wrong. This isn’t like limb grafts, your whole body has been destroyed, Gumbs, everything but your nervous system and your eyes. The only new body we’ll get is the one we make ourselves. We’ve got to stay here and—and work this out ourselves.”
    “Major Gumbs,” said McCarty, “I think we have wasted quite enough time. Begin your search for the materials I need.”
    For a moment Gumbs was silent, and their collective body did not move.
    Then he said : “Yes, that was a leaf, a twig and a bunch of berries, wasn’t it? Or mud. Miss McCarty, unofficially of course, there’s one point I’d like your opinion on. Before we begin. That is to say, I daresay they’ll be able to patch together some sort of bodies for us, don’t you think? I mean, one technical fellow says one thing, another says the opposite. Do you see what I’m driving at?”
    George had been watching McCarty’s new limb uneasily. It was flexing rhythmically and, he was almost certain, growing minutely larger. The fingers groped occasionally in the dry grass, plucking first a single blade, then two together, finally a whole tuft. Now she said: “I have no opinion, Major. The question is irrelevant. Out duty is to return to camp. That is all we need to know.”
    “Oh, I quite agree with you there,” said Gumbs. “And besides, there really isn’t any alternative, is there?”
    George, staring down at one of the fingerlike projections visible below the rim of the monster, was passionately willing it to turn into an arm. He had, he suspected, started much too late.
    “The alternative,” he said, “is simply to keep on going as we are. Even if the Federation holds this planet for a century, there’ll be places on it that will never be explored. We’ll be safe.”
    “I mean to say,” added Gumbs as if he had only paused for thought, “a fellow can’t very well cut himself off from civilisation, can he?”
    Again George felt a movement toward the thicket; again he resisted it. Then he found himself overpowered, as another set of muscles joined themselves to Gumbs’s. Quivering, crabwise, the something meisterii moved half a meter. Then it stopped; straining.
    And for the second time that day, George was forced to revise his opinion of Vivian Bellis.
    “I believe you, Mr. Meister—George,” she said. “I don’t want to go back. Tell me what you want me to do.”
    “You’re doing beautifully now,” George said after a speechless instant. “Except if you can grow an arm, I imagine that will be useful.”
    The struggle went on.
    “Now we know where we are,” said McCarty to Gumbs.
    “Yes. Quite right.”
    “Major Gumbs,” she said crisply, “you are opposite me, I believe?”
    “Am I?” said Gumbs doubtfully.
    “Never mind. I believe